


A question

by redkakumei



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 03:17:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1101752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redkakumei/pseuds/redkakumei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Red reflects on the time he's known Lizzy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A question

**Author's Note:**

> Just some words put together as a Christmas present for Gala_MD. English is not my first language and I often care more about rhythm than grammar so sorry for any mistakes!

**A question**

It was never about you. It was about my list. I tell people it began as a private joke. “Oh, you don’t want to be on my list”, like it was something that had always existed, since I was a kid having mud fights in the playground.

But I remember the day I actually wrote down a name in my notebook, with a hashtag and an angry number _one_ before it. That disgusting excuse of human being, Jack Logan, who took kids from their beds and left them on the street so everyone could see his work.

You saw right through him, but I was the only one who believed you. You didn’t know, of course, that I was always in the shadows, keeping a promise to a long gone friend. Always watching, always silent, always protecting you.

I killed Logan a year later. You were going through a bad break up and I had to make it look like a car crash so his body would burn and hide the marks of torture. I like to think it cheered you up.

You kept working, always surrounded by the most mentally, criminally ill of New York, and I kept adding names to my list. For every killer you got, a mass murderer; for every kidnapper, a slave trader. I took Dembe to Sierra Leone to clean the blood off some diamonds, and if it was right after you got one on your own finger, the sight of it was only a reminder of a debt long due.

I watched, silent as ever, as you pronounced your vows, and I was slicing the throat of a man in a brothel in Cambodia by the time you left for your honeymoon.

I never helped you. I saw you struggle, I saw you crying, and getting angry, and getting the job done. Over and over again, until you were head of your unit, until you got into the academy. It would have been so easy to pick up the phone and take away your problems: a raise, a promotion, a recommendation at Quantico.

But I never did it. I never wanted to. See, I didn’t really care for you. I kept my promise and I watched over you, I kept you safe. And it was actually the fact that you did it all by yourself that made me stop watching you and start _seeing_ you instead. But by then I knew you well enough to know you would be livid if I dared intervene.

So suddenly I was keeping watch over this fierce, brave, clever woman who didn’t need anyone to take care of her, and while seeing your every step along that road I had written all those names on my list. Because of you. For you.

So it seemed only logical that we should strike them out together. 

*****

I had even the most tiny details planned: all the documents, the back up plans, the alibis in case some… _business associate_ needed to contact me. And yet, when I saw you sitting across me all I managed was some idiotic stuff about your hair and Baltimore and home, all the funny and charming things I had rehearsed in my mind forgotten.

But you’re… _you_. And you obviously tried to get some information about me, and you wanted to know _why you_ , if you’re not special.

“Oh, I think you’re very special”, I told you, and suddenly I was myself again.

*****

It took me a moment to recover when I saw your scar. I knew about it, of course, but you got it before I started watching over you and it feels like a punch in the gut to suddenly imagine what you must have suffered, what you had to go through without me there to prevent it.

I certainly kept you safe the following months. At least, as safe as I could while respecting the life you have chosen for yourself. Luli joked once about how easier would things be if you had chosen to be a librarian, instead of an FBI agent, but that would make you a different person, wouldn’t it? You might be Elizabeth, or even the Liz your friends know, but you certainly wouldn’t be _my Lizzy_.

*****

When we stop chasing the problems and they begin chasing me, endangering even your life, I know I have to solve certain issues before I can return to your side. I leave everything and everyone behind but I can’t help to pick up the phone and call you. I need you to know that I’m alive, that I’m not abandoning you, that I will always watch over you, no matter where I am. And then you ask me if I’m your father.

*****

It takes me such a long moment to find my voice, to tell you simply _no_ , and I can’t believe that it’s all gone _so wrong_ , that all the effort I put on letting you find the truths surrounding your life by yourself, that all the times I offered you only quiet companionship, when all I wanted was to tell you every single piece of the story I know, has come to this…

But I know I still can’t tell you, and it takes every bit of strength I have left not to. So all I do is remind you to be careful of your husband and I walk into the night.


End file.
